November 28, 2025
Episode summary
Most people I know have email inboxes that are overflowing. I can’t count how many times someone has proudly (or sheepishly) shown me their phone with hundreds - sometimes thousands - of unread emails piled up.
That would drive me comletely insane. For me, ending most days with an empty inbox isn’t just satisfying - it’s also a big security win. That’s why we’re tackling it in the workshop.
Reaching inbox zero takes the right tools and strategies. But the most overlooked piece is mindset. If you don’t accept the reality of the tiny amount of time you have to read email, you’ll never make the changes needed to get to inbox zero.
If you’re ready to hit inbox zero - daily, weekly, or even monthly - join me in the email workshop.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Super Simple Security Principles, where you learn how to think, not just what to do.
I'm Nick Jackson, here to learn along with you from my good buddy and master guardian, Makani Mason.
Let's go.
This is episode 91.
(00:21):
Again, we're continuing on with our email workshop.
This week's priority is going to be Inbox Zero.
If anybody knows me, I would love to look at my email box and it'd be zero.
That'd be awesome.
But that said, I do use email, so I know there's going to be inboxes, but you're going to have to explain what Inbox Zero means, Makani, because does that mean no emails?
(00:51):
Well, yeah, so that was going to be my first question, is how widespread familiarity is with this term.
No, the idea is getting your inbox to zero.
Okay.
And, you know, the common definition, I think, is ending each day with inbox zero.
I love that.
(01:12):
That's, yeah.
But, I mean, it could be once a week or however often you decide, whatever.
The concept, though, is getting your inbox down to zero.
And it's definitely funny because I'll have people, you know, I'm helping, as you know, help people with tech problems all the time.
And, you know, they'll show me their phone and the little, on their email client, you know, there's the badge.
(01:35):
The thousands.
Yeah, I mean, right.
It's actually, it's not uncommon.
It kind of blew my mind for a while when I first started seeing, like, literally hundreds, thousands sometimes.
Tens of thousands.
How do you survive that way?
I don't get it.
I think the record I had was somewhere in the 30,000 range.
(01:58):
Yeah, I mean, that was, that was dramatically high.
That's wild.
Yeah.
Okay.
That would take you, like, a full year going through that.
Yeah.
Obviously, something serious needs to change in that case, right?
Right, right.
So, yeah.
And this is the last priority we're going to talk about.
(02:18):
Okay.
Mostly because, and I left it for last, because it's not directly a security thing, strictly speaking, right?
Right.
I mean, I think of it, and we've talked through all this series of priorities, a lot of reasons why decreasing stress, increasing usability, all those things, good digital organization.
(02:39):
Like, all these improve your security, reduce decision fatigue.
It's easier to see the important stuff because it's not drowned out in noise.
Like, there's all these reasons why.
But still, it's not as directly security.
So, but I feel like it's probably one, again, most people I've talked to, they would certainly like to get to inbox zero, if not once a day, at least once a week, or some sort of regularity, or ever.
(03:09):
Or ever, for some sort of, right?
Yeah.
So, but definitely in the email workshop, I want to do some digital organization.
And I'll say this, even though this business and what I'm focusing on mostly helping people is digital security.
(03:32):
As you know, I'd call digital organization probably as much of a personal obsession as it is with security, right?
Yeah.
And even though we didn't, haven't built the business around that, like, it does, it's kind of a sub piece, right?
(03:53):
Absolutely.
There are some relevant pieces that help that.
And so, in the email workshop, obviously, we'll be talking about how to help getting your email digital organization.
And there's three pieces that I want to talk about to kind of my approach to digital organization in general and with email.
(04:13):
Okay.
So, three?
Yep, three.
Yep.
So, the first one is, and you'll hear this term a lot these days, but I've found it to be an important one, is mindset.
And this is something I've talked with a lot of people about, but in particular, probably the one I've talked most about with my sister, Dawn.
(04:36):
She has a number of email accounts.
And one of the things that she struggles with most is, in her own words, is FOMO, fear of missing out.
And what that means in context of this is, you know, she's reluctant to unsubscribe from newsletters because there might be some cool stuff that comes in there, a recipe.
(05:00):
Like, she loves to collect recipes.
She's a gardener.
She's got a lot of hobbies, a lot of interest.
She's a master seamstress.
She's a master gardener.
She's a good chef.
Like, and so she likes to get all this information.
She's really reluctant because she's going to miss out on stuff.
She wants to hoard it all.
(05:21):
Right, right.
And so, that's a challenge, right?
Oh, absolutely.
And one of the things that I have found with digital organization in general is that the strategies and tools, which are the second two and three things we'll talk about in a second, they matter.
(05:43):
But as when I've changed tools, changed strategies many times over the years, but I end up with the same problems.
If I don't fix the underlying things that are going on inside of me, the mindset that drive, it's like, if I have a fear of missing out on things and I can't let go of these things, and no matter what my tools look like, I would hang on to them.
(06:09):
It just might look a little different with different strategies or tools, right?
Right.
Or if I'm afraid or whatever's driving it, like, those core things are, they're the foundation of mastering your digital organization.
What's really causing your problems.
I mean, sometimes it's just strategy and tools, but most times there are some other mindset underlying pieces that contribute as well for most people.
(06:33):
So, if I might recap this first step is the goal is to get into the mindset that you need to make sure that we're trying to prioritize an inbox zero.
So, like, that's the mind frame we need to get into.
You know, even if it is, look at through emails so you don't miss out on things and categorizing them, you know, but there's still that mindset of, hey, I need to have this.
(07:03):
Well, and what I would say is, so, actually, we'll dive back into Dawn for a second, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, talk about the recipes and stuff.
She knows, I mean, for her, inbox zero is a priority.
Yeah.
But it conflicts with this fear of missing out priority.
Gotcha, yeah.
But, so, the reality is, though, when she stops to really think about it, look at it, she knows that she has so much stuff ported up, she's never going to review it all.
(07:32):
She's never going to look at it all, right?
And I've done the same thing.
I mean, she is far from unique in this, right?
I'm sure lots of people can relate to this idea.
Yeah.
We know we're not going to get to that.
And so, it's just a question of being willing to acknowledge that reality and decide because everything's a tradeoff.
(07:53):
We only, I mean, there are unlimited amounts of cool information, amazing stuff out there, things to learn, things to do.
I mean, that's one of the amazing blessings of our modern technology and age, right?
Right.
But it also creates this big problem, like, we've got to face the reality that sometimes we've just got to cut some stuff out.
(08:15):
Like, we can't do it all.
Yeah, trim the fat.
And that's hard, right?
Because there's a lot of good things that we're just going to have to eliminate, and that's what I'm talking about.
Gotcha.
Gotcha.
Okay.
So, step two, are we there?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, strategies.
And what I mean by strategies are, for example, transitioning.
(08:38):
How do we get from those thousands of emails in our inbox to inbox zero the first time?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right?
Because there are some things we can do for that.
And then there's, you know, managing the ongoing maintenance so we don't go from the inbox zero that we accomplished right back to where we began.
(09:00):
Right?
We need some strategies for that.
And, like, for example, Dawn, and again, she's not unique in this, but she has multiple email accounts because she's tried to solve her spam problem by spinning up new email accounts.
But now she has a different problem where she's having to manage the multiple email accounts, and that's cumbersome.
So, we need some strategies to deal with that problem as well.
(09:21):
How to transition, basically, and how to prevent it from going back to being bad again.
Right.
Yeah.
And that's, yeah, we'll get into the specifics there, but that's really the high level of what I'm talking about when I say strategies.
(09:42):
Okay.
So, trim it up.
Get rid of what you don't need.
And then tools.
Okay.
And so, there are some great tools to help us with this inbox zero problem.
I haven't used all of them.
I've used a few.
And there's, so, again, this is one area where there's some room for experimentation with our participants.
(10:09):
Fast mail itself, actually, is my main one.
And it has some great features that really actually set it apart from most other email providers in my estimation.
Okay.
And so, that'll be a lot of our focus.
Yeah.
And so, the last thing I actually want to mention here is a shout-out.
(10:34):
So, there is a friend of mine, Jeff Roberg.
And he runs a website, and we'll put a link to it in the show note, called Tidy Bytes.
Yeah.
And Bytes is B-Y-T-E-S, as in, you know, computer.
And so, what he's, you know, he's kind of in a similar phase to us where he's starting up.
(10:56):
He still has a day job.
But he's trying to build an online business, helping people with digital organization.
And he's been doing a weekly newsletter for, I don't know, a year or more, maybe a year and a half.
I can't even remember exactly.
I mean, I've been following him for a long time.
I get his weekly newsletter.
Nice.
Yeah.
He's a nice guy.
And he's talked about, and he's going to, hopefully, anyway, depending on how time and circumstances allow, anyway,
(11:22):
consult with us a bit on email workshop and some of the digital organization aspects.
Um, cause he's, he's had some good input and thoughts and strategies on, and tools, um, on all this as well.
So, um, and I've given him a, you know, he's talked a little bit of his, we, he has a little bit of crossover into the security world.
(11:42):
So I've given him feedback on password managers, for example, cause he had an email about password managers, you know, things like that.
So we've gone back and forth.
Yeah.
He's a really good guy.
Um, and so anyway, I'm hoping that things work out that he, uh, hopefully even gets to like be online.
Maybe and participate if he wants to.
And yeah, he's, he's, he's a really smart guy, so we'll see how it goes.
(12:03):
But anyway, that's the last thing I wanted to add for this episode.
Awesome.
So any concluding thoughts for us, Nick?
You know, when we're going to inbox zero, make sure you start with the right mindset.
Make sure we're maximizing, you know, the tools and trim the fat, trim out what you don't need.
(12:30):
You know, uh, if I were to recap it, I'd kind of recap it in those words.
Yeah.
And shout out to Jeff, Jeff, right?
Yeah.
Yep.
Um, yeah, well, and that's, and I guess all I'd say is, uh, yeah, I like digital organization
(12:52):
and I think it'll, it'll, it'll help with our email security as you know, that might sound
a little bit strange, but it's a, I think it's a valuable end unto itself as well for most
people.
Yeah.
Totally.
So I I'm happy for the overlap.
Awesome.
Okay.
(13:13):
Okay.
That was a great show, man.
Are you ready to take action and wondering where to start?
Get my Bulletproof My Identity starter kit for free.
The seven most vital layers of protection everyone needs.
I'll send you one step at a time and help you if you get stuck.
(13:34):
Just go to bulletproofmyid.com and enter your name and email, and I will send you the first
step.
Again, that's bulletproofmyid.com.
Welcome to Super Simple Security Principles, where you learn how to think, not just what to do.
I'm Nick Jackson, here to learn along with you from my good buddy and master guardian, Makani Mason.
Let's go.
This is episode 91.
(00:21):
Again, we're continuing on with our email workshop.
This week's priority is going to be Inbox Zero.
If anybody knows me, I would love to look at my email box and it'd be zero.
That'd be awesome.
But that said, I do use email, so I know there's going to be inboxes, but you're going to have to explain what Inbox Zero means, Makani, because does that mean no emails?
(00:51):
Well, yeah, so that was going to be my first question, is how widespread familiarity is with this term.
No, the idea is getting your inbox to zero.
Okay.
And, you know, the common definition, I think, is ending each day with inbox zero.
I love that.
(01:12):
That's, yeah.
But, I mean, it could be once a week or however often you decide, whatever.
The concept, though, is getting your inbox down to zero.
And it's definitely funny because I'll have people, you know, I'm helping, as you know, help people with tech problems all the time.
And, you know, they'll show me their phone and the little, on their email client, you know, there's the badge.
(01:35):
The thousands.
Yeah, I mean, right.
It's actually, it's not uncommon.
It kind of blew my mind for a while when I first started seeing, like, literally hundreds, thousands sometimes.
Tens of thousands.
How do you survive that way?
I don't get it.
I think the record I had was somewhere in the 30,000 range.
(01:58):
Yeah, I mean, that was, that was dramatically high.
That's wild.
Yeah.
Okay.
That would take you, like, a full year going through that.
Yeah.
Obviously, something serious needs to change in that case, right?
Right, right.
So, yeah.
And this is the last priority we're going to talk about.
(02:18):
Okay.
Mostly because, and I left it for last, because it's not directly a security thing, strictly speaking, right?
Right.
I mean, I think of it, and we've talked through all this series of priorities, a lot of reasons why decreasing stress, increasing usability, all those things, good digital organization.
(02:39):
Like, all these improve your security, reduce decision fatigue.
It's easier to see the important stuff because it's not drowned out in noise.
Like, there's all these reasons why.
But still, it's not as directly security.
So, but I feel like it's probably one, again, most people I've talked to, they would certainly like to get to inbox zero, if not once a day, at least once a week, or some sort of regularity, or ever.
(03:09):
Or ever, for some sort of, right?
Yeah.
So, but definitely in the email workshop, I want to do some digital organization.
And I'll say this, even though this business and what I'm focusing on mostly helping people is digital security.
(03:32):
As you know, I'd call digital organization probably as much of a personal obsession as it is with security, right?
Yeah.
And even though we didn't, haven't built the business around that, like, it does, it's kind of a sub piece, right?
(03:53):
Absolutely.
There are some relevant pieces that help that.
And so, in the email workshop, obviously, we'll be talking about how to help getting your email digital organization.
And there's three pieces that I want to talk about to kind of my approach to digital organization in general and with email.
(04:13):
Okay.
So, three?
Yep, three.
Yep.
So, the first one is, and you'll hear this term a lot these days, but I've found it to be an important one, is mindset.
And this is something I've talked with a lot of people about, but in particular, probably the one I've talked most about with my sister, Dawn.
(04:36):
She has a number of email accounts.
And one of the things that she struggles with most is, in her own words, is FOMO, fear of missing out.
And what that means in context of this is, you know, she's reluctant to unsubscribe from newsletters because there might be some cool stuff that comes in there, a recipe.
(05:00):
Like, she loves to collect recipes.
She's a gardener.
She's got a lot of hobbies, a lot of interest.
She's a master seamstress.
She's a master gardener.
She's a good chef.
Like, and so she likes to get all this information.
She's really reluctant because she's going to miss out on stuff.
She wants to hoard it all.
(05:21):
Right, right.
And so, that's a challenge, right?
Oh, absolutely.
And one of the things that I have found with digital organization in general is that the strategies and tools, which are the second two and three things we'll talk about in a second, they matter.
(05:43):
But as when I've changed tools, changed strategies many times over the years, but I end up with the same problems.
If I don't fix the underlying things that are going on inside of me, the mindset that drive, it's like, if I have a fear of missing out on things and I can't let go of these things, and no matter what my tools look like, I would hang on to them.
(06:09):
It just might look a little different with different strategies or tools, right?
Right.
Or if I'm afraid or whatever's driving it, like, those core things are, they're the foundation of mastering your digital organization.
What's really causing your problems.
I mean, sometimes it's just strategy and tools, but most times there are some other mindset underlying pieces that contribute as well for most people.
(06:33):
So, if I might recap this first step is the goal is to get into the mindset that you need to make sure that we're trying to prioritize an inbox zero.
So, like, that's the mind frame we need to get into.
You know, even if it is, look at through emails so you don't miss out on things and categorizing them, you know, but there's still that mindset of, hey, I need to have this.
(07:03):
Well, and what I would say is, so, actually, we'll dive back into Dawn for a second, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, talk about the recipes and stuff.
She knows, I mean, for her, inbox zero is a priority.
Yeah.
But it conflicts with this fear of missing out priority.
Gotcha, yeah.
But, so, the reality is, though, when she stops to really think about it, look at it, she knows that she has so much stuff ported up, she's never going to review it all.
(07:32):
She's never going to look at it all, right?
And I've done the same thing.
I mean, she is far from unique in this, right?
I'm sure lots of people can relate to this idea.
Yeah.
We know we're not going to get to that.
And so, it's just a question of being willing to acknowledge that reality and decide because everything's a tradeoff.
(07:53):
We only, I mean, there are unlimited amounts of cool information, amazing stuff out there, things to learn, things to do.
I mean, that's one of the amazing blessings of our modern technology and age, right?
Right.
But it also creates this big problem, like, we've got to face the reality that sometimes we've just got to cut some stuff out.
(08:15):
Like, we can't do it all.
Yeah, trim the fat.
And that's hard, right?
Because there's a lot of good things that we're just going to have to eliminate, and that's what I'm talking about.
Gotcha.
Gotcha.
Okay.
So, step two, are we there?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, strategies.
And what I mean by strategies are, for example, transitioning.
(08:38):
How do we get from those thousands of emails in our inbox to inbox zero the first time?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right?
Because there are some things we can do for that.
And then there's, you know, managing the ongoing maintenance so we don't go from the inbox zero that we accomplished right back to where we began.
(09:00):
Right?
We need some strategies for that.
And, like, for example, Dawn, and again, she's not unique in this, but she has multiple email accounts because she's tried to solve her spam problem by spinning up new email accounts.
But now she has a different problem where she's having to manage the multiple email accounts, and that's cumbersome.
So, we need some strategies to deal with that problem as well.
(09:21):
How to transition, basically, and how to prevent it from going back to being bad again.
Right.
Yeah.
And that's, yeah, we'll get into the specifics there, but that's really the high level of what I'm talking about when I say strategies.
(09:42):
Okay.
So, trim it up.
Get rid of what you don't need.
And then tools.
Okay.
And so, there are some great tools to help us with this inbox zero problem.
I haven't used all of them.
I've used a few.
And there's, so, again, this is one area where there's some room for experimentation with our participants.
(10:09):
Fast mail itself, actually, is my main one.
And it has some great features that really actually set it apart from most other email providers in my estimation.
Okay.
And so, that'll be a lot of our focus.
Yeah.
And so, the last thing I actually want to mention here is a shout-out.
(10:34):
So, there is a friend of mine, Jeff Roberg.
And he runs a website, and we'll put a link to it in the show note, called Tidy Bytes.
Yeah.
And Bytes is B-Y-T-E-S, as in, you know, computer.
And so, what he's, you know, he's kind of in a similar phase to us where he's starting up.
(10:56):
He still has a day job.
But he's trying to build an online business, helping people with digital organization.
And he's been doing a weekly newsletter for, I don't know, a year or more, maybe a year and a half.
I can't even remember exactly.
I mean, I've been following him for a long time.
I get his weekly newsletter.
Nice.
Yeah.
He's a nice guy.
And he's talked about, and he's going to, hopefully, anyway, depending on how time and circumstances allow, anyway,
(11:22):
consult with us a bit on email workshop and some of the digital organization aspects.
Um, cause he's, he's had some good input and thoughts and strategies on, and tools, um, on all this as well.
So, um, and I've given him a, you know, he's talked a little bit of his, we, he has a little bit of crossover into the security world.
(11:42):
So I've given him feedback on password managers, for example, cause he had an email about password managers, you know, things like that.
So we've gone back and forth.
Yeah.
He's a really good guy.
Um, and so anyway, I'm hoping that things work out that he, uh, hopefully even gets to like be online.
Maybe and participate if he wants to.
And yeah, he's, he's, he's a really smart guy, so we'll see how it goes.
(12:03):
But anyway, that's the last thing I wanted to add for this episode.
Awesome.
So any concluding thoughts for us, Nick?
You know, when we're going to inbox zero, make sure you start with the right mindset.
Make sure we're maximizing, you know, the tools and trim the fat, trim out what you don't need.
(12:30):
You know, uh, if I were to recap it, I'd kind of recap it in those words.
Yeah.
And shout out to Jeff, Jeff, right?
Yeah.
Yep.
Um, yeah, well, and that's, and I guess all I'd say is, uh, yeah, I like digital organization
(12:52):
and I think it'll, it'll, it'll help with our email security as you know, that might sound
a little bit strange, but it's a, I think it's a valuable end unto itself as well for most
people.
Yeah.
Totally.
So I I'm happy for the overlap.
Awesome.
Okay.
(13:13):
Okay.
That was a great show, man.
Are you ready to take action and wondering where to start?
Get my Bulletproof My Identity starter kit for free.
The seven most vital layers of protection everyone needs.
I'll send you one step at a time and help you if you get stuck.
(13:34):
Just go to bulletproofmyid.com and enter your name and email, and I will send you the first
step.
Again, that's bulletproofmyid.com.
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